Services
Work that changes how people lead, relate, and care.
Verena partners with organizations navigating pressure, burnout, mistrust, and the gap between what a system intends and what people actually experience.
Services
Verena partners with organizations navigating pressure, burnout, mistrust, and the gap between what a system intends and what people actually experience.
For Organizations
Verena works with corporate organizations, leadership teams, professional associations, government agencies, and healthcare systems navigating the human side of performance, culture, and change.
The most costly problems organizations face rarely announce themselves clearly. They show up in turnover, disengagement, fractured trust, failed initiatives, and leaders carrying more than the system knows how to support.
Her work helps organizations name what is actually happening beneath the surface — and respond with greater clarity, steadiness, and skill.
Grounded in over 15 years of clinical practice across occupational medicine, acute care, community health, federal corrections, and migrant health, Verena brings a perspective shaped by both frontline experience and systems-level work.
She founded the first clinic of its kind in Canadian Armed Forces history, and her work now informs training and system change at a national level.
Verena’s work sits at the intersection of leadership, medicine, art, and communication. At its core is a challenge to a fundamental assumption: that human connection is either intuitive or technical, when in reality, it is both an art and a science. That integration is what allows her to see — and shift — what more conventional approaches often miss.
For over a decade, she has spoken and facilitated for organizations across the country — from corporate teams and executive environments to public institutions, healthcare authorities, and mission-driven organizations — bringing a perspective shaped by both frontline experience and systems-level work.
Strategic keynotes for conferences, leadership summits, and organizational events. Each talk is grounded in clinical depth and designed to shift how people think, lead, and relate.
Format: 45–60 min keynote | In-person or virtual
Half-day and full-day experiences for teams ready to go deeper. Designed for retreats, offsites, leadership development, and practical skill-building.
Format: Half-day or full-day | In-person or virtual
Specialized training for healthcare, military, public sector, and high-stakes service environments where trust, context, and care delivery matter.
Format: 60 min to full-day | In-person or virtual
Strategic advisory support for organizations navigating trust, culture, equity, and care delivery in complex systems.
Format: Project-based or retainer | Contact for scope
Focused 60-minute sessions for busy teams. A strong entry point into Verena’s frameworks, language, and perspective.
Format: 60 min | In-person or virtual
Book a keynote if you need a clear, compelling talk for a conference, summit, or organizational event.
Choose a workshop or intensive if your team needs depth, reflection, and practical application.
Explore training or consulting if your organization is working through culture, trust, or systems change.
Book a Discovery Call →With a real conversation.
Verena does not offer packages. She does not do off-the-shelf. She works with organizations that understand the most important problems — the ones costing them people, trust, and performance — do not come with a standard solution.
Whether you are bringing her to your conference stage, your clinical team, or your leadership table, the work is always tailored. The outcomes are always real. And the starting point is always the same.
Tell her about your people.
She will tell you what is possible.
01 — Keynotes
They do more than inform. They give people language, deepen reflection, and expand what becomes possible in the room.
Most Requested
High-impact, decision-ready talks built for corporate conferences, leadership summits, professional associations, and institutional events.
What disconnection is actually costing your organization.
Every organization has a disconnection tax.
It shows up in turnover, presenteeism, failed change initiatives, and leadership fatigue.
This keynote names what many workplace conversations still avoid: the health of your culture is not just a people issue — it is a performance issue.
Drawing on over 15 years of clinical practice, the founding of the first clinic of its kind in Canadian Armed Forces history, and the science of relational health, Verena introduces a framework for identifying disconnection early — and building cultures where people stay, contribute, and lead well.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Corporate leadership teams, executive offsites, HR and people leaders, professional associations, post-secondary institutions, leadership retreats, team development days, organizational strategy sessions
Format: 45–60 min keynote | Expandable to workshop or retreat session
Building steadiness in a world that keeps shaking.
Joy is not something you chase — it is something you build.
This session reframes joy as a form of internal steadiness that allows people to lead and function under pressure. Verena draws on clinical insight, personal experience, and more than 15 years of working with people navigating impossible circumstances. The through-line is always the same: those who remain steady do not do so by avoiding difficulty. They do so because they have built something within themselves that difficulty cannot easily reach.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Leadership retreats, executive offsites, team reset experiences, wellbeing programming, leadership wellness intensives
Format: 60–90 min session | Ideal for retreats and offsites
The hidden cost of carrying too much, too well.
Some of the most capable people in your organization are paying a hidden cost.
They are the ones who carry more, absorb more, and deliver more — not because they have greater capacity, but because they are relied on as though they do.
Over time, performance becomes expectation. Expectation becomes identity. And identity becomes something they feel responsible to maintain — even at their own expense.
This keynote brings together two realities many organizations still struggle to name: the cost of sustaining high performance without adequate support, and the burden placed on those who are consistently seen as capable.
Drawing on clinical insight, leadership experience, and her work in high-performance, high-responsibility environments — often as the only woman of colour in the room — Verena reframes performance not as output alone, but as something that must be resourced, protected, and understood in context.
Because when capability is over-relied on, it becomes costly — for individuals and for systems.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Corporate leadership teams, executive environments, high-performance industries, diverse professional networks, women’s leadership, executive offsites, leadership retreats, team intensives, organizational development sessions
Format: 45–60 min keynote | Expandable to workshop or retreat session
“Verena is a warm soul who not only has a vast wealth of knowledge in the realm of compassionate care but also has an extraordinary ability to deliver information in an engaging and meaningful manner that both captivates and moves those who have the privilege of hearing her speak. She has influenced the way that I practice being present with others when engaging in meaningful conversation that pertains to all manner of health. Verena shines whenever she’s given the opportunity to speak about what is meaningful to her — when she’s at her most authentic.”
Jeremie Saunders
Canadian Actor & Sickboy Podcast Host (CBC)
Why good people keep missing each other.
Most people experience themselves as misunderstood.
This keynote bridges clinical insight and the science of communication, translating complex relational dynamics into practical, usable tools.
Because communication is not just what we say. It is how we show up — and how we are interpreted.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Corporate teams, leadership development programs, professional organizations, team retreats, communication workshops, leadership intensives, staff development days
Format: 45–60 min keynote | Expandable to workshop
When trust breaks, everything else gets harder.
In high-pressure environments, trust is not a soft skill — it is operational.
Through the TRUST lens — a framework Verena developed for first responders and clinicians — this keynote explores how trust is built, fractured, and interpreted in real time, and how context shapes behaviour in critical moments.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: First responders, law enforcement, government teams, military health services, crisis response environments, leadership intensives, team-based training environments, retreats focused on performance under pressure
Format: 45–60 min keynote | Expandable to workshop or training day
Where good intentions quietly fail real people.
Every system is built with intention.
But not everyone is equally seen within it.
This keynote explores the gap between what we believe we deliver and what is actually experienced — especially by those who are not reflected in research, training, or dominant narratives.
The people we miss are often right in front of us.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Leadership teams, interdisciplinary teams, government agencies, training institutions, education sessions, system redesign workshops, organizational retreats
Format: 45–60 min keynote | Expandable to workshop or training day
“Lots of people are educated. Many are gifted speakers. Very few have IT — that cocktail of magic and magnetism that makes a moment memorable. Verena has IT. She is the rarest combo of energetic and empathetic. Approachable but holds you accountable. She is a wonder.”
Jonathan Torrens
Actor, Broadcaster & Advocate
All keynotes are available in 30–, 45–, or 60–minute formats. Extended sessions, workshops, and retreat offerings can be tailored to your organization’s goals, audience, and timeline.
Book a keynote if you need a clear, compelling talk for a conference, summit, or organizational event.
Choose a workshop or intensive if your team needs depth, reflection, and practical application.
Explore training or consulting if your organization is working through culture, trust, or systems change.
Book a Discovery Call →
02 — Workshops + Intensives
Not passive. Not generic. Not a slide deck borrowed from someone else’s program.
Verena’s workshops are experiential, evidence-based, and built for teams that are ready to do the actual work — not just talk about it. Every session is tailored to your organization’s needs, culture, and context. She builds from clinical expertise, lived experience, and more than 15 years of knowing what actually moves people.
If your team needs to leave a session with something they can use — a shared language, a clearer picture of each other, or a skill they did not have before — this is where that begins.
Leadership retreats, executive offsites, and team development sessions live here — not under keynotes.
A keynote is an hour. The work that happens in a retreat or a full-day offsite is different in kind: slower, deeper, and designed to produce something a room leaves knowing together.
Verena facilitates these engagements for organizations that want more than a talk. They want their people to leave with a shared language, a clearer picture of each other, and something they can actually use.
If you are planning a leadership retreat, executive offsite, or team development day — and you want the facilitation to be as substantive as the work your people do — this is where that conversation begins.
All workshop content is tailored to your organization. These are the areas Verena works in most often:
For teams operating at high capacity for too long. This workshop builds practical tools for sustaining performance without burning through people — including how to recognize early signs of breakdown and what leaders can do about it before it becomes a retention problem.
Not a boundaries workshop in the self-help sense. This is a session on how high-functioning professionals learn to protect their capacity, communicate limits without damaging relationships, and build the kind of emotional sustainability that actually holds up under pressure.
Leaders are often the first to notice when someone on their team is struggling — and the least equipped to respond well. This workshop builds the language, the awareness, and the confidence to have harder conversations earlier, and to create environments where people do not have to hide what is happening with them.
For teams ready to move beyond awareness into practice. This workshop examines how cultural background shapes communication, trust, and the experience of belonging — and what it takes to build a team culture where more people can actually show up fully.
For leadership teams that understand performance is relational. This session examines the specific behaviours that build and erode psychological safety — and gives leaders a practical framework for showing up in ways that make their teams more effective, not just more comfortable.
In high-stakes environments, trust is not a soft skill — it is operational. This workshop applies Verena’s TRUST framework to team dynamics, exploring how trust is built, fractured, and repaired in real time, and what leaders can do to maintain it when pressure is highest.
These sessions are best suited for retreats, offsites, team development, and longer-form leadership experiences. Each can be tailored as a workshop, facilitated session, or extended keynote.
Building the capacity to remain steady in unstable environments
Joy is not something you chase — it is something you build.
This session reframes joy as a form of internal steadiness that allows people to lead and function under pressure. Verena draws on clinical insight, personal experience, and more than 15 years of working with people navigating impossible circumstances. The through-line is always the same: those who remain steady do not do so by avoiding difficulty. They do so because they have built something within themselves that difficulty cannot easily reach.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Leadership retreats, executive offsites, team reset experiences, wellbeing programming, leadership wellness intensives
Format: 60–90 min session | Ideal for retreats and offsites
What grief teaches us about living
Some of the most formative lessons do not arrive by choice.
This session moves through the landscape of loss — what it does to us, what it asks of us, and what it quietly makes possible when we stop resisting it. Drawing on clinical insight, personal narrative, and spoken word, Verena traces the relationship between grief and growth — not as a path from darkness to light, but as a reckoning that teaches us who we are and how we want to live.
This is not a grief workshop. It is an invitation to stop treating loss as the interruption of life, and start recognizing it as one of life’s most honest teachers.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Leadership retreats, university audiences, community organizations, healing-centred retreats, reflective spaces, personal development experiences
Format: 60–90 min session | Best suited for intimate or reflective environments
The science and soul of resilience
Resilience is not about bouncing back — it is about moving forward with integrity.
This session weaves together the neuroscience of trauma, the psychology of post-traumatic growth, and the deeply human art of making meaning. It explores what it actually takes to move forward without leaving yourself behind — and what leaders, teams, and organizations can do to support that process rather than inadvertently obstruct it.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Executive teams, leadership summits, resilience trainings, retreats, leadership intensives, team rebuilding sessions
Format: 60–90 min session | Expandable to half-day intensive
Grace, intention, and getting unstuck
Movement requires courage — and support.
This session explores what it takes to move forward when life no longer looks the way you expected. Weaving together storytelling, clinical insight, and spoken word poetry, Verena takes audiences through three movements: the weight of being stuck, the role of community in making movement possible, and the intentional practice of breaking barriers — not by force, but by grace.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Women’s leadership conferences, diverse professional networks, university audiences, retreats, transformation-focused programs, coaching intensives, community-based events
Format: 60–90 min session | Ideal for retreats and team reset experiences
On presence, self-adjustment, and the cost of showing up
For professionals who have learned, often subtly, to adjust themselves in order to function, succeed, or be received.
This session examines what it means to be physically present, but internally divided — navigating professional spaces while filtering, monitoring, and reshaping how you show up.
Not as a failure of the individual, but as an adaptation to context.
Over time, this creates a quiet distance — between what is thought and what is said, between what is felt and what is expressed.
Drawing on clinical insight and lived experience, Verena explores how this pattern develops, how it impacts communication and performance, and what it takes to show up with greater clarity and alignment.
Audience leaves with:
Best for: Corporate teams, leadership groups, diverse professional networks, women’s leadership, ERG events, leadership retreats, team culture sessions
Format: 60–90 min session | Ideal for retreats, ERG events, and team development days
Book a keynote if you need a clear, compelling talk for a conference, summit, or organizational event.
Choose a workshop or intensive if your team needs depth, reflection, and practical application.
Explore training or consulting if your organization is working through culture, trust, or systems change.
Book a Discovery Call →
03 — Clinical Training
For healthcare providers, institutions, and systems ready to close the gap between the care they intend to deliver and the care their patients actually experience.
Verena’s clinical training is grounded in more than 15 years of frontline practice in military health, federal corrections, and migrant health — environments where the gaps are widest and the stakes are highest. She has trained hundreds of Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada clinicians nationally and pioneered the nurse practitioner role across every federal prison in Nova Scotia.
She trains clinicians not only in what to do differently — but in how to see differently.
Book a keynote if you need a clear, compelling talk for a conference, summit, or organizational event.
Choose a workshop or intensive if your team needs depth, reflection, and practical application.
Explore training or consulting if your organization is working through culture, trust, or systems change.
Book a Discovery Call →
04 — Consulting
Strategic advisory support for organizations navigating culture, trust, equity, and care delivery in complex systems. Best suited for leaders and teams ready to move beyond performative change into practical redesign — grounded in clinical authority, lived experience, and over 15 years of working inside the institutions that need it most.
Her consulting is grounded in the same national award-winning work that created the first clinic of its kind in Canadian Armed Forces history — built inside one of the most hierarchical institutions in Canada, with no playbook and no precedent.
She has delivered national training to hundreds of CAF and Veterans Affairs Canada clinicians, presented to the most senior levels of military leadership, and developed models that are now being scaled across the country.
She brings that same rigour — and that same refusal to accept that complex problems require simple solutions — to every consulting engagement.
For executive teams and emerging leaders navigating the intersection of performance, identity, and relational health. Built on the insight that the most effective leaders are not simply the most productive — they are the most connected.
For organizations building new programs, redesigning existing ones, or trying to understand why what they built is not working the way they expected. Verena brings frontline clinical insight, national-scale design experience, and the ability to see what gets missed when the people closest to the problem are not in the room.
Reviewing existing policies, procedures, and frameworks to identify who is protected, who is overlooked, and where the widest gaps remain.
For organizations that have made a commitment to equity and need help translating that commitment into systems, processes, and culture that actually change. Not diversity theatre — structural change.
Helping organizations understand who they are serving, who they are missing, and what it would take to close that gap. Includes audits, implementation planning, and team-level training grounded in culturally and racially responsive care.
Format: Project-based or retainer | Contact for scope
Not sure where to start? Most organizations that work with Verena did not know exactly what they needed until they spoke with her. That is what the first conversation is for.
Book a keynote if you need a clear, compelling talk for a conference, summit, or organizational event.
Choose a workshop or intensive if your team needs depth, reflection, and practical application.
Explore training or consulting if your organization is working through culture, trust, or systems change.
Book a Discovery Call →
With a real conversation.
Verena does not offer packages. She does not do off-the-shelf. She works with organizations that understand that the most important problems — the ones that are costing them people, trust, and performance — do not come with a standard solution.
Whether you are bringing her to your conference stage, your clinical team, or your leadership table: the work is always tailored. The outcomes are always real. And the starting point is always the same.
Tell her about your people.
She will tell you what is possible.
Start the Conversation →